Who: Speakers: Amy Sample Ward | Netsquared; Debra Askanase; Ivan Boothe

When: 1:30 p.m.

What: What is the basis of community organizing and why is it important to online campaigns? Traditional community organizing informs a successful online campaign and lays the groundwork for a sustainable, effective movement for social change. In this session, participants will get their hands dirty planning a social media campaign that integrates traditional organizing theory and practice. During the workshop, we will present traditional community organizing principles and methods of campaign mapping. We will also ask up to three attending organizations to present an idea for an upcoming campaign and goals. Attendees will divide into break-out groups to design the online campaign. The groups will use both community organizing principles and social media tools to create an online social media campaign. Each group will present its campaign strategy and tactics to the entire workshop. Workshop leaders will offer feedback and evaluation. Come to the session with your online campaign ideas, and get ready to have fun mapping out a campaign!

“The Totally Baldacious campaign is a great way to show your love and solidarity with cancer patients while you help raise awareness and funds for cures.  Whether you decide to shave your head or color your hair, you will be helping The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raise money for much-needed, life-saving cancer research.”

I really like so many aspects of this campaign that instead of simply changing my profile picture or tweeting about the campaign, I wanted to take a closer look, share with you some of the elements that are making it a great campaign, and some suggestions for ways it can be improved.

What Works:

Microsite: Creating a space for your campaign that is separate from your organization’s website can be really helpful for those new to your work or finding your campaign via social media.  People know they are in the right place, any tabs or links they click on will help them learn more about the campaign (and not get lost in the various sections of your organization’s website) and target information to them about the rest of your work based on their interest in the campaign.  Creating a separate web space isn’t always necessary, but in this example it really works.

Options: The barrier to entry to the Totally Baldacious campaign is low enough that everyone can participate in a way that contributes to the campaign, but that they are still comfortable with.  Asking people to shave their heads is a big deal, so creating innovative ways for them to join together without having to commit to something they just can’t commit to is really essential to high participation numbers.  Encouraging people to lighten the color of their hair instead of shaving it, or changing their online profile picture to a bald head to raise awareness all play on the same theme for support of those who’ve lost their hair from their fight with cancer, but don’t make people feel bad if they don’t want to “go all the way.”

Calls to Action: What may seem simple, is often very difficult to achieve, and in this case it’s the calls to action.  The Totally Baldacious campaign, though, does an excellent job making the calls to action clear, consistent, and do-able.  It’s so important that your calls to action – both buttons and actions – are the same throughout your site or campaign space (don’t want people getting confused about what you want them to do) and are easy to identify quickly (don’t want people poking around trying to find how they can participate).  Make it as clear as possible, like they did, with a “how can I participate” section.

What Could Improve:

Visible Goal: Even though the calls to action are very clear, the goal of those actions is a bit muddled. Is it to raise money? Is it to raise awareness? Is it to grow the list of supporters? It can’t be all of them.  It can be one, and the others can be bonuses; but all three can’t exist together as the ultimate goal.  Depending on the page you are on or the call to action you are joining, the goal you are helping to reach can be different.  It would be great if all signs pointed back to the same place.  (Individual fundraising pages have goal meters, why not an overall goal and thermometer graphic?)

Visible Participants: A campaign like this draws on the power of social media and the networks of it’s supporters. People that change their profile image to a Baldacious bald image (like mine above) should be able to see others who have done the same, and those who haven’t done it yet should get to see the latest newly-bald faces to inspire them to join.  People contributing money to an individual’s campaign or to the campaign over all should be able to see other’s who have donated, and those thinking about donating should be able to see other recent donors to inspire them to give.  These are just a few of the many ways to make the participating community more visible.

Movement Building: Don’t ever forget that what we are trying to do isn’t just get people to change a picture or donate money; it’s to change our world into one without the issues, illnesses, and struggles too many people face every day.  With that in mind, it would be great to see the Totally Baldacious campaign create a global-facing or at least globally open portal, too – through the way participation is made visible (previous point) or in other ways.  I see such potential in campaigns that get it right on so many levels to also get it right by catalyzing collaborations and truly building towards a movement.

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Thanks to all those at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and everyone else who made the campaign possible.  It looks great, is creating some fun ways for people to join in, and I hope it continues towards success!

If you haven’t yet, why not make yourself Totally Baldacious?!

In April, we’ll be focused on creating and managing online campaigns. There are a lot of tools out there and only so much time… Come discuss some great examples of successful campaigns and how to build strategy and tactics for your own organization’s work.

Paul Massey and Phil Jones from the we20 campaign will be presenting on the strategy and execution of an integrated online campaign. And we’ll have a Q&A session following the presentation. As always, there will be plenty of networking, too.

Agenda:

• 5:30-6 doors open & networking
• 6 – 6:15 welcome & intros
• 6:15 – 6:45 Paul & Phil presenting about online campaigning
• 6:45 – 7:15 open Q&A
• 7:15 – 7:45 networking

See if there is a Net Tuesday in your city or find out more about starting your own!